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Clooney: Village burnings in Sudan a war crime

George Clooney is trying to highlight satellite evidence from a U.S.-based anti-genocide group that 26 villages in Sudan were intentionally set on fire last month.

The American actor and activist said Thursday that destroying a village is a war crime and that the international community must counter and create consequences for such crimes.

The Satellite Sentinel Project, which Clooney helped found, said satellite imagery shows that 26 villages, food crops and grasslands were burned in a 54-square-mile (140-square-kilometer) area in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan in November.

Sudanese troops are fighting rebels who were once aligned with South Sudan. When South Sudan peacefully broke away from Sudan last year, the rebels were placed in the Sudan half of the partition.